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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marcos who wrote (146922)	10/3/2004 2:12:27 PM
From: marcos	Respond to of 281500

' The scene: U.S. troops carry on hostilities to "liberate" a nation. As the confrontation wears on, the public (and finally the American soldiers themselves) come to doubt both the U.S.'s aims and its ability to win. Ultimately, the troops are recalled; when peace is declared, it is evident that in terms of resources and human lives, the U.S. was defeated. Vietnam? Korea? Nope. How about Canada! Contrary to popular notions of U.S. history, the Vietnam War was far from the first war that the U.S. lost. That distinction belongs to the War of 1812, a war fairly unfamiliar to most U.S. citizens today, and one which in its day was as unpopular as the Vietnam War in its time. Our grade-school history books claim that the main cause of the war was that U.S. ships trading with Napoleonic France were being hassled by the British ... ' ' ... John C. Calhoun claimed that "In four weeks from the time that a declaration of war is heard on our frontier, the whole of Canada will be in our possession." James Madison similarly proclaimed that "[t]he acquisition of Canada this year will be a mere matter of marching," and Henry Clay boasted, "I trust I shall not be deemed presumptuous when I state that I verily believe that the militia of Kentucky are alone competent to place Montreal and Upper Canada at your feet." ... ' lutins.org It was actually Jefferson, not Madison, who said 'the acquisition of Canada will be a mere matter of marching', he said this in a letter dated 4 Aug 1812, to a colonel William Duane [as per Colombo's Quotations] 'Very little is known about the war of 1812, because the americans lost it.' - Eric Nicol, 1961 'Can you tell me, Sir, the reason why the public buildings and library at Washington should be held more sacred than those at York?' - Reverend John Strachan of York, 30 Jan 1815, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson ... US forces had not only looted but entirely burnt York, taking special care to destroy the library ... to discourage this practice, regulars burnt Washington the following year ... Jefferson had objected to the latter, but curiously not to the former

To: marcos who wrote (146922)	10/4/2004 9:32:12 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I used not the term 'harassment' but rather 'impressment', which is what the practice was called at the time .... the french were impressing sailors as well, you know, and so were the yanqui pirates - navies were rough outfits in those days, rum sodomy and the lash, scurvy and sinking and shipwreck etc .... impressment formed in no way a genuine casus belli for any party The fact that other countries may have done it doesn't make it not an act of war. The Leopard firing on the Chesapeake, is a classic example of an act of war, one countries navy attacking another's. Sure desire for land by the US was part of the war but it wasn't a simple case of aggression for land by the US. For canadians it forms part of our core identity that less than half a million of us were able to defend ourselves against a nation with fourteen times the population The US was fighting against England, which had a greater population than the US at the time. Of course England also had to deal with France. at the peace of Ghent the US negotiators dropped all pretense of concern with impressment, and no mention of the practice appears in any clause of the treaty No mention of impressment in the treaty doesn't equal no American concern about impressment at the time of the treaty, let alone no concern at the beginning of the war. The war was about impressment, and land disputes, and the attempts of Great Britain to impose a blockade on France during the Napoleonic Wars and the fact that English soldiers occupied territory belonging to the United States, despite Great Britain's promise to remove these soldiers in the Treaty of Paris (1783), and an aggressive desire by some Americans to get more land, and other things. The official reasons in the declaration of war were 1) The impressment of American sailors by the British, 2) British violation the neutral rights and territorial waters of America, 3) The blockade of U.S. ports, 4) Refusal to revoke the orders which prevented foreign ships from trading in America. These were real reasons even if they were not the only ones. All in all the war was a muddled one, both in its origins and it the way it was waged (for example the US never had a very coherent strategy and also one of the biggest battles of the war happened after the peace treaty was signed). It probably would have been better if the war could have been avoided, but it wasn't simply a war of American aggression. Tim